XII
Tracking down her number was easy, once I had a name. (Apparently that’s how it works.)
I called, and within twenty minutes the former Blah Blah Blah was banging on my hall door. “Oh, BILLY! BILLY!” she honked, and threw herself into my arms.
“MARY JANE, my liebling, how ARE you?”
“Wonderful, wonderful. Wicked pad, my dear!”
“Thanks. I’ll give you the grand tour later. I love your shoes, by the way.”
“Miu Miu.”
“Well they are TOO TOO . . . !”
We chatted amiably about this and that for a couple minutes more before she finally screamed: “SO TELL ME, ALREADY, WHAT THIS BIG NEWS IS! You said on the phone that you wanted to bring me up to speed. You can’t tease me like this, and not follow through! I’m LACTATING, I’m so excited!”
“Okay, okay. Got a few minutes, though? Can I tell you the whole story? It all goes back to that coma, remember . . .”
So I sat her down and I told her everything—from the coma to the kiss to my Billy Scissorhands breakdown. And because I actually KNEW HER NAME, I used it every chance I could. So this is pretty much how the conversation went:
“So then, MARY JANE, Flip said . . .”
“NO WAY!”
“It’s true, MARY JANE! So, I said to him . . .”
“STOP! YOU DID NOT!”
“Oh yes, I did, MARY JANE. And he was all . . .”
“OH MY GOD! I’M DYING!”
“Don’t die, MARY JANE. But see, he totally seemed like . . .”
“GET OUT! GET! OUT!”
And so on.
When I got to our big kiss, well, I thought my new friend MARY JANE MCAFFERTY was having a stroke, I honestly did. That’s when her face got all twisted and twitchy, and she got this freaky Joker-from-Batman smile that was too big to really be a smile—I thought it must be some involuntary muscle reaction that occurs when your brain explodes.
I literally thought my gossip was so juicy, it killed her.
But then she bolted upright and screamed: “YOU MADE OUT WITH FLIP KELLY?”
“In front of God and two hundred slack-jawed witnesses aboard the good ship Jungle Queen!”
She choked on an imaginary bite of food. “YOU MEAN . . . THERE ARE PICTURES?”
Oh. Hm. I hadn’t even thought of that. But yes. “Yes, I suppose there are.”
She was already scribbling madly in her to-do book.
I LIKE THE WAY THIS DAME THINKS!
We then spent a while chatting about this and that, and getting reacquainted and caught up on all the latest gossip, until I felt confident enough to tell her why I asked her to come.
I laid it all out for her.
I filled her in about my new alter ego, Superfreak, and my new calling in life, and how I thought I needed to somehow use my drag to challenge the system (She nodded vigorously at this.); and that I needed to go back to the Eisenhower Academy one more time, but for ME this time, and give it a clear, concentrated effort, you know; and that I felt like I needed to conquer those rich swamp rats once and for all (She pumped a power-to-the-people fist in the air.); that I was going to earn their respect and their acceptance, or die trying; and, along the way, drag them into the twenty-first century, right? and teach them that being gay does not mean that God hates me or if I sneeze, they’re going to get AIDS; or that just because they all have penises DOES NOT MEAN I want to lure each and every one of them into the broom closet. (Here she jumped up and hugged me. “YOU GO, SISTA SOULJAH!” she screamed.)
Emboldened, I went so far as to show her my Superfreak costume, and explained the meaning and power behind the rags.
She was suitably awestruck. “Those are SOME HOLY RAGS, then, huh?” she whispered.
Then I mumbled that “maybe, if you wanted, you could be my sidekick.”
She accepted on the spot.
“OH MY GOD!” she squealed. “I’ve only been waiting MY WHOLE LIFE for someone to ask me that! OF COURSE! OF COURSE! What’s my name? What’s my shtick? What do I wear? I’m not so good with the tying old rags together, though. I’m going to need something preassembled.”
I pulled out the bedraggled circus outfit with a timid “ta-dah!” “But picture it clean, of course, and totally glammed out with new spangles, new sequins, and all new feathers. It will be rejeweled and reglittered and reborn, better than before! We’ll do it together! I’ll show you how! And we’ll get you a really fab wig and a mask, and you can be WIG GIRL!”
“Do you really think I could pull it off?”
“SURE! That’s the thing about superheroes and secret identities: They’re SUPPOSED to be opposites so nobody will ever suspect . . . You are the meek-and-mild whisper chick by day, and the bold, audacious FEATHERED FIST OF JUSTICE by night! It’s a classic paradigm! You can’t lose!”
“Let’s do it!” she said. “Let’s change the world!”
WHEEEEEEEE!